


a tomorrow for us

by SEMellark



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Bullying, Eventual Happy Ending, Falling In Love, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Supernatural Elements, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28166691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SEMellark/pseuds/SEMellark
Summary: If time is an endless expanse, then Kageyama is the fixed point to which Shouyou always lands.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> not me starting another multi-chap fic

The first time it happens, Shouyou is six years old, and he doesn’t even notice. He’s playing outside in the backyard one day when a once clear and sunny sky suddenly splits open, and rain pours down in a vicious onslaught with no clear beginning. Shouyou just blinks and suddenly it’s dark and he’s soaked to the bone.

He drops his toy truck and sprints into the house, barely managing to avoid slipping on the floorboards and landing on his butt in a messy, sopping heap. “Mom!” Shouyou calls, worried that he’ll be in trouble for tracking water into the house, but there’s no answer.

The lights are off in the house, but there are candles on nearly every flat surface. Shouyou stares at them in confusion – his mom doesn’t trust him not to knock over candles while he plays so she never lights them – and is about to get up and go looking for her when he hears a creak on the staircase down the hall.

“Hello?” a voice calls warily, one Shouyou’s never heard, and scared tears are just beginning to build in his eyes as a woman he doesn’t know appears from around the corner. “Is anyone – “ She pauses when she sees him, eyes wide as she takes in the wet, trembling child on the floor just in front of the back door. “Oh, Ni - Shouyou!”

“Who – “ Shouyou starts to say as the woman hurries forward. She’s carrying a flashlight, shining it in the area around Shouyou but never directly at him. As if she’s looking for something. “Who are you?”

“I’m a friend,” she says, smiling in a way that vaguely reminds him of his mother. As she crouches down in front of him, Shouyou notices that her hair is the same color as his, and he can’t help but stare. It’s not a color he’s ever seen before on anyone else. “I know you’re probably scared, but I won’t hurt you. Oh, you’re soaking wet, I’ll go find a towel.”

She starts to rise to her feet, and Shouyou lurches forward, panicked for some reason he can’t explain. “Where – Where’s my mom?”

“You’ll see her soon, I promise,” the woman says, gentle as she helps Shouyou to his feet. “Go to the bathroom, okay? I’ll find you some dry clothes.”

Shouyou listens dutifully, even if he’s confused and scared and nothing in the house looks like it did this morning. The bathroom, at least, is still the same. Even the gouges in the doorframe to mark his growth are still there, although there are a couple more that extend way above Shouyou’s head. There’s even another set on the opposite frame, although Shouyou is too young to read what the Kanji says.

The woman is nothing but nice to him for the rest of his stay there. She brings him a shirt that’s many sizes too big and makes him warm milk with honey like his mom does whenever it rains. Despite not knowing her name, Shouyou feels safe with her. She looks at him like everything he says is important and only speaks to him in quiet, gentle tones.

He’s beginning to think he might like to be her friend when suddenly the lights are back on and he’s completely alone in the kitchen. Shouyou blinks stupidly at the chair across from him that the woman had just occupied. The mug he was holding is gone, his hands cupped around nothing but air.

“Shouyou!” He whips his head around and sees his mother standing at the sink, hand over her heart as she stares at him with wide eyes. “Oh, sweetheart, you’re okay!”

She hurries to him and gathers him in her arms, crushing him to her chest. “Mama!” he exclaims. “What happened? Where were you? Where did that nice lady go?”

His mother shakes her head and pulls away to look down at him. Her eyes are crinkled at the corners and overflowing with tears. It scares Shouyou, so he doesn’t ask anymore questions. “You just Traveled. You’ve been gone for a few hours, but it’s okay, you’re home, now.”

The entire time he was gone, it never once occurred to Shouyou that he had gone forward in time, even though he’d known it was a possibility. He feels like he should be in trouble for not being more careful and listening to his mother’s warnings, but she never says anything about that day again.

Shortly thereafter, Shouyou finally meets his father, who shows up on their front porch one day with a small smile and a bouquet of dead flowers. Shouyou’s mom cries nearly all day, practically pushing her son into his father’s arms and demanding they spend as much time together as possible before either of them Travels again.

For a short while, Shouyou finally gets to have a father of his own. He’s quiet and doesn’t smile much, but he plays outside with Shouyou and tells him stories of his Travels. His dad has fiery red hair just like him, which makes Shouyou happy. But it also reminds him of the woman from the future.

He wants to see her again for a long time after his jump. He talks about her at every opportunity, asking his dad if he’s seen her during any of his Travels: the kind lady with the red hair and gentle smile who lives in their house in the future. No one ever has an answer to any of his questions, although Shouyou never really expects them to.

For a while, it’s an experience entirely his own, and that fact is exciting. The lady from the future is his. No one else in the entire world knows her, and for a while, that placates Shouyou.

His father disappears again after three months. Shouyou’s mother doesn’t cry, but she busies herself with housework for a while after he leaves, more subdued than Shouyou’s ever seen her.

Five months after that, Natsu is born. Shouyou sees her for the first time in the hospital, and he’s the first person to hold her after his mom. His sister is weird, all pink and wrinkly and screaming at the top of her lungs, but Shouyou doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything so wonderful.

She has hair just like him and their father. And when she smiles at him for the first time, Shouyou thinks that he loves his baby sister, and that he’s going to take care of her with everything he’s got.

~

Shouyou wakes up in the middle of the night, bladder full and skin sweat-slick from a dream he can’t remember. He gets up and starts his stumbling trek to the bathroom, barely getting his hand around the door handle before he hears a low, “Um… “

He starts, blinking sleep him his eyes only to find that the handle he’s holding isn’t to his bedroom door, but to a refrigerator. Shouyou snatches his hand back with a gasp, spinning around with his heart in his throat.

He’s standing in a kitchen he’s never seen before, far nicer than his own back home or in any house he’s ever visited. The appliances are new and Western. There’s an island of white marble in the middle of the room, adorned with bowls of fruit, a blender with nasty-looking green stuff in it, and a _toaster oven._

This is a _rich person’s_ house _._ And Shouyou has just Traveled right into it.

There’s the sound of a throat being cleared, and Shouyou jumps, ducking down behind the island in a futile attempt to hide. “Don’t bother,” a voice says after a few moments of tense silence. “I know about the, uh… time travel stuff.”

Despite his mother’s warnings – Shouyou is curious by nature, so sue him – he slowly straightens up enough to peek over the edge of the island. The man standing before him is… old. Older than Shouyou, surely, but probably not as old as his mom. He has an angry face, Shouyou thinks, and dark blue eyes that pin Shouyou to where he crouches.

The man raises a dark eyebrow at Shouyou when he makes no moves to leave his cover. “Didn’t you hear me?” he asks, speaking slowly, as if Shouyou were a child. “I’m not mad at you for being here. I know you can’t help it.”

“How?” Shouyou demands, standing at his full height to properly confront the man before him. “How do you know about me?”

The man blinks at Shouyou slowly, dark eyes scanning him where he isn’t hidden below the island. He’s quiet for a few moments before he murmurs, “ _Fuck_ , you’re tiny.”

Shouyou can’t help it. His mouth drops open. Even in the future, people make fun of him for his height? “I’m eight!” Shouyou snaps. The man takes a startled step back. “I’m supposed to be small, okay?”

The man holds up his hands in an almost appeasing gesture, and his mouth twitches into a grimace. “Sorry, sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean – I wasn’t – “

Shouyou eyes the man carefully, observing as he flounders for something to say. He almost feels kind of bad as he watches him struggle, even though the stranger was the one who insulted him mere moments after their first meeting. “I’ll forgive you,” he says eventually, watching the curious way the man’s shoulders seem to sag in response, “but only if you tell me where I am.”

“Berlin.” At Shouyou’s blank stare, the man sighs and says, “The capital of Germany?”

“ _Germany?_ ” Shouyou gasps, whipping his head around to glance out the window above the sink. But all he sees is blue sky. They must be high up. “But – I’ve never Traveled to a different country before!”

The man scratches the back of his neck, stepping further into the kitchen but never taking his eyes off Shouyou. “Yeah, well… you end up in weird places sometimes. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

This man’s knowledge about Shouyou’s ability is worrying, especially since they don’t look to be related in any way. Shouyou can’t imagine trusting someone outside of his own family enough to tell them such a precious secret, but this man clearly _knows_ him.

“Who – “ Shouyou begins, hesitating when the man tenses, standing on the opposite side of the island from him. “Who are you?”

It isn’t a hard question, but all Shouyou gets in response is a pair of blue eyes staring down at him almost… sadly. “I’m… sorry, I can’t,” he says. His words are harsh and brittle, like he’s struggling to talk. “I’m not exactly sure… what I can tell you.”

“Do you live here?” Shouyou presses. “You said we’re in Germany, but you’re Japanese, aren’t you?”

The man nods. “I’m here for… work, I guess. But we – I own this place.” He winces, unable to properly disguise his blunder, and Shouyou latches onto that immediately.

“ _We?_ Do I live here with you? In the future?”

The man sighs, long and suffering, running a big hand through his inky black hair. “Yeah, we work together. We’re friends.” He almost seems to choke out the last word, mouth twitching into a frown that Shouyou is quick to mirror.

“Are you sure? You don’t seem to like me very much.”

“I do!” the man snaps immediately, eyes flashing as he glares across the island at Shouyou. “We’re partners, okay, of course I fucking like you.”

Partners.

“Partners?” Shouyou echoes. The man just stares at him like a frightened animal, obviously so uncomfortable that Shouyou can’t help but take pity on him. “You’re pretty dumb, huh, mister. Are we friends or are we partners? You can’t even stick to your own stories.”

The man snorts. “You’ve always been such a little shit, Shouyou.”

Shouyou blinks. Not even his friends at school call him by his given name.

“Oh, yeah, it’s twenty-twenty-one, by the way,” says the man suddenly. “I’d tell you how long you’ll be here, but, uh… I don’t really know. You never mentioned coming here before.”

“Maybe I forgot?” Shouyou offers. He doesn’t want to get his future self into trouble, or make the man think that he doesn’t trust him. “I’m pretty forgetful.”

“Oh, believe me, I know.”

Shouyou scowls, sticking out his tongue when the man smirks at him. “Where am I?” Shouyou asks. “I mean, where’s _your_ me?”

“He’s… somewhere,” the man replies, looking out the window above Shouyou’s head. “I haven’t seen him in a few months.”

“Months?” Shouyou balks, horrified. He’s never Traveled for that long before, never even come _close_ to it. But the man said it so casually, as if this is something he’s come to expect and learned to deal with. “Is my – Do my Mom and sister know? They aren’t worried, are they?”

The man shakes his head as he leans forward against the island, bracing most of his weight on the palms of his hands. “No, they’re fine. They call every once in a while to check in, but they know they’ll be the first to know when you make it back.”

It does little to control Shouyou’s mounting anxiety. He’s known for a while that his jumps have been lasting longer and longer, but it’s usually just by a few minutes. The thought that his jumps will last _months_ by the time he’s a grown up is terrifying. How long will he spend Traveling at a time when he’s his father’s age?

“Hey,” the man says, his voice the softest it’s been since Shouyou came here. He isn’t smiling – Shouyou is beginning to wonder if this guy even _can_ smile – but his face doesn’t look scary anymore. “Everything will be fine. You always come back, right? It doesn’t matter how long you’re gone, things will still be the same when you get back.”

Shouyou appreciates the sentiment, though he doubts he’ll ever stop worrying about his place in space and time, no matter how old he gets.

“You’re my best friend,” Shouyou says, much to the man’s apparent shock. “Right? You have to be. I wouldn’t have told you so much if you weren’t.”

“You’re a shitty liar,” is all the man says.

That’s not surprising. Shouyou can’t hide anything to save his life, although he’d thought the potential consequences of revealing his time traveling ability to the world would scare him into life long silence. Apparently not.

“When do we meet? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.”

The man frowns again, staring at the island’s marble surface for a long time before saying, “Junior high.”

Shouyou cocks his head. “You don’t sound so sure.”

“It’s not that simple,” the man says, meeting Shouyou’s eyes again. The intensity Shouyou sees there knocks the breath out of him. It looks like there’s more he wants to say, but for a long while, the two of them just stare at one another in silence.

Shouyou doesn’t know what to say. This person he’ll come to know is obviously holding something back, but Shouyou has no idea what it could be. There’s so much he wants to ask the man, and he thinks he’d probably get answers if he pressed hard enough. Despite expressing his reluctance to reveal too much, the man can’t seem to stop talking, and he’s probably already said a lot more than he’d initially wanted.

But Shouyou somehow feels like he’d be taking advantage of his future best friend if he asked more questions at this point. And he doesn’t want to do that, doesn’t feel like it’s his place.

This weird, rich-person home in Germany isn’t his, and neither is this stranger. Not yet, anyway.

So, despite his curiosity, Shouyou holds his tongue.

“I can’t wait to meet you,” Shouyou says, and he’s never felt so honest. “I’ve never had a best friend before.”

He doesn’t get to see the man’s reaction. The lights go out, and when Shouyou looks around, he’s back in his bedroom at home. No marble island. No fancy toaster oven. No blue-eyed stranger.

It’s different from the time he met Natsu. He’d been drawn to her immediately, and the memory of her stayed with him constantly for weeks, but Shouyou hadn’t exactly missed her. They’d barely had time to speak, and she never once mentioned their relation to one another or answered more than a couple of Shouyou’s questions.

But Shouyou misses the man in Germany almost as soon as he’s gone. There’s a lot about him Shouyou doesn’t know, things he can’t possibly understand until they officially meet and become friends. And Shouyou is impatient by nature. He doesn’t want to wait, but there’s nothing else he can do.

~

Shouyou hadn’t known it at the time, but that first jump from Japan to Germany set the precedent for most of his future Travels.

Not all of the time he spent Traveling in the coming years would be memorable. Not all of his jumps would even be fun or enlightening.

But the ones that Shouyou _does_ remember, good and bad, all have something to do with Kageyama Tobio.


	2. Chapter 2

Volleyball comes into Shouyou’s life exactly when he needs it. After his trip to Germany, the idea of Traveling to a foreign place became a very real fear. There wouldn’t always be someone around who knew him or spoke his language.

Shouyou’s never really been particularly athletic. He does well enough in school during gym, and his teachers often tell him he has quick reflexes when they play games like basketball or dodge ball. But quick reflexes really don’t make up for Shouyou’s lack of height, which prevents him from actually enjoying most sports.

His classmates are always one step ahead of him no matter what Shouyou does, so eventually he just gives up. He has more important things to worry about than sports, anyhow.

That all changes the first time Shouyou sees the Little Giant flying on television. It sparks _something_ in Shouyou, an unnamable feeling that claws at his insides and rings in his ears long after he peddles away from the window front. He stays up all night watching matches on YouTube and tells his mother he spent the night Traveling when she asks about the bags under his eyes.

He ropes his classmates into playing with him. They’re a patchwork team comprised of kids from every sports club in the school, but they’ll get the job done.

The first time he steps into a _real_ gym, right before their first official match, Shouyou is as excited as he is terrified. Everything is so loud, and the lights are bigger, brighter, than they are in their middle school’s gym. Nerves set in in a way Shouyou’s never experienced, and he has hardly any time to bask in the euphoria of everything he’s worked for before he’s hurrying to the bathroom.

He doesn’t make it, of course, because nothing ever really goes Shouyou’s way. He runs into a couple boys from another team, and they tower over him with their dumb smirks and white and blue jerseys. They mock him as people always do. They call him short, wonder amongst themselves about this elementary school kid at a junior high tournament, and it’s nothing Shouyou hasn’t heard before. He doesn’t want to give these boys the satisfaction of a reaction, not on what is probably the best day of Shouyou’s life, but he’s so _tired_ of being looked down on –

“Oy,” a voice says beyond Shouyou’s shoulder. “What do you think you’re doing? If you have enough time to talk, you should be – ”

Shouyou turns. There’s another boy there, a member of the same team as Shouyou’s aggressors if the uniform is anything to go by. As their eyes meet, the boy stops his advance. They stare at one another for a long moment until something clicks into place inside Shouyou’s head.

“Berlin!” Shouyou claps his hands over his mouth, feeling how warm his skin is with his mortification. Everyone in the vicinity is now watching him.

The boy blinks, mouth falling open although no sound escapes it. After a moment, he finally says, “What did you say?”

“Berlin,” Shouyou says despite his better judgment, voice muffled. “It’s the… capital of Germany?”

“You don’t sound so sure,” says the boy who’d been heckling him before. “Whatever. C’mon, King, we’re warming up.”

Shouyou stays stalk still as the boy frowns, seems to shake himself before stepping forward, hands burrowed in the pockets of his jacket as he hurries past Shouyou.

“Shouyou?” Izumi says, appearing out of nowhere to place a warm hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

That was _him_. The man from Berlin. He’s younger, obviously, shoulders less broad and hair a bit shorter. But there’s no mistaking that this… _King_ person grows up to be the man Shouyou met all those years ago.

Shouyou glances over his shoulder, stares wide-eyed at the boy’s retreating back. “Yeah, I’m – I’m good.”

Shouyou doesn’t know how to feel in that moment. And he doesn’t have long to process it, not when his team is completely _slaughtered_ in their very first game, ripped to absolute pieces by Kitagawa Daichi, the team that is home to his future best friend – Kageyama Tobio.

They lose, and they lose badly. Shouyou’s feelings are all over the place. He’s embarrassed himself thoroughly in front of his friends, the team he put together with the promise that they were going to be great.

Shouyou’s ears ring as he stands close to the net, listening to the roaring cheers of the crowd. The sound of the ball falling to the court echoes in his mind, and Shouyou’s no stranger to losing, but this… this feels like something different.

And Shouyou doesn’t understand why, not until Kageyama grips the net with one hand, looks Shouyou square in the eye, and says, “What have you been _doing_ this whole time?”

And Shouyou… Shouyou feels small. Smaller than he’s ever felt. Kageyama’s eyes, so blue and _familiar,_ are furious, and the weight of his glare is heavy, his scorn the most crushing thing Shouyou’s ever felt.

But even beyond that, below the surface, Shouyou feels white-hot anger. He wants to cry. He wants to scream. He wants to go back and do it all over again, work harder, train more. What use is his power when he can never go back when he really wants to?

It doesn’t make sense to him, why a setter from a rival team would be bearing down on him for a loss that isn’t his own. What does it matter to him? As far as Kageyama knows, they’re nothing to each other. Why would a stranger gaze upon Shouyou’s anguish and look at him like _he’s_ the one in pain?

“We’re partners,” Future Kageyama had said.

At thirteen years old, Shouyou can’t see how that could possibly be the truth.

~

“Honestly, Hinata-kun, this is the seventh time you’ve been late in two weeks.”

This scolding is familiar to Shouyou. He’s gotten it consistently ever since he started Traveling. There’s nothing he can do but stay quiet and listen.

He can’t tell his teacher that he’d been spirited away on his way to school by a force beyond his control. He can’t explain the fear he’d felt at finding himself in an unfamiliar house, standing in an unfamiliar kitchen, watching an unfamiliar woman cry over her breakfast with a hand on her heavily pregnant belly.

She’d seemed… familiar. Shouyou had wanted to comfort her so badly that he might’ve even exposed his presence, but he’d blipped out of her world before he could.

“I understand that you don’t live especially close, but you’re going to need to adjust your habits if you can’t make it to school on time. If this happens again, we’ll have to call your mother. Do you understand?”

Shouyou nods, a world away. “Yes, ma’am.”

~

Karasuno is Shouyou’s fresh start, and he’s determined to make the best of it. He promises his mother that joining an actual volleyball club won’t affect his grades – as if they could even get any worse – and steels himself for the next three years of his life.

Kageyama is there, because _of course_ he is. Their relationship barely strays from the place it was in when they met. If they aren’t arguing over something or another and getting kicked out of the gym, they’re avoiding eye contact when they cross paths between classes.

And it’s not like Shouyou doesn’t _want_ to try and make things work between them. He can’t just forget that they’ll eventually become so close that Shouyou will tell Kageyama his family’s most well-kept secret. But the tension and _awkwardness_ between them seems insurmountable to Shouyou, and no matter what he knows about their future, he just can’t see a life beyond avoiding Kageyama when they’re off the court.

In the end, it only takes one day. One game. One moment, and suddenly, Shouyou’s entire perspective _shifts._

It happens when Shouyou thinks he’s at his lowest. He can never be an ace like Azumane, and watching their senior play only cements it in his mind. He’ll never have the height or the skill. All of it was just a huge waste of time, and all Shouyou has to show for it is the apex of his jump.

 _Maybe time-traveling is all I can ever have,_ Shouyou thinks as he watches Azumane fly, and then there’s a fist yanking at his practice shirt.

“What are you spacing out for?” Kageyama snarls in his face, and Shouyou would feel more terrified if Sawamura and Sugawara weren’t already hurrying forward to diffuse the situation as usual. “We’re playing a game, dumbass!”

“I haven’t even _done_ anything,” Shouyou snaps irritably, reaching up to claw at Kageyama’s wrist. “Let _go_ of me – ”

Kageyama seems to growl, giving Shouyou a rough shake that nearly rattles his brain. “Not on your life. We’re going to make each other invincible, and we can’t do that if you won’t even _try._ ”

The words seem to shake the rest of the team as much as they do Shouyou. There’s a weight to them that Shouyou can’t even begin to comprehend, but his entire body goes warm as he hears them. As pissed off and frustrated as Kageyama looks, he’s looking at Shouyou like he _expects_ something from him.

Shouyou isn’t used to that. No one’s ever wanted anything from him, and even if he doesn’t know what it is, Shouyou desperately wants to _give_.

“Are you finished, King?” Tsukishima asks from the other side of the net, and the spell is broken.

But Shouyou won’t forget. Not for as long as he lives.


End file.
